The Surly Barista

I've been waking up early for about 3 months now and seem to have less time than I ever did. The first few weeks were a revelation and I imagined what wonderful things would fill these found hours, how much more together my life would be, how much more space I was creating for creating, writing, exercise, grooming. I don't know what homey adage is most appropriate now; the one about leading horses to water or any of the ones about people never really changing. Either way, today I'm seeking contentment in my current space since it is the only one I can actually do anything about.

In other news, I'm starting to consider not continuing my education in psychology. Right now I consider myself strange in mostly quirky ways with relatable flaws. Every single person I've met with a PhD is really strange and gloriously flawed. I met a forensic psychologist last Friday night. Really smart, closing in on 40, married and kept wanting his friend to have us all over to his friend's place to smoke. Wife (who wasn't there) is also a psychologist who works for Department of Justice and not a big fan of the pot smoking on account of the zero-tolerance policy of her employer. We kept telling him that neither of us (I was with a girlfriend) had any interest in smoking anything at all. Had a burn on his neck from his bong. Naturally, we hit it off. And we really did. I've often joked about my uncanny ability to find the least available man in any room but it's true, I really can and do find these men. The other guy in the group was someone I talked to for hours a year and a half ago. We ended up sitting down with them because he recognized me from our chat the day before Thanksgiving, 2008. He also has a girlfriend that he's been with so long, they would common-law married in most other states. We played pool with them, talked about our families, relationships, the psychologist's belief that he might be mildly autistic...it was quite a night. But the moral of the story is Ava should not get an advanced degree in psychology and Ava seriously needs to figure out how to spend her Friday nights with single men.

And the same day I realized I got a scheduled raise, my big boss waxed eloquent about how great I was doing but (isn't there always a fucking but) I really needed to do more of this work or that work. Kind of made me think, yea, whatever asshole. Looks like they'll keep paying me no matter what so kiss my ass. He's one of those guys who likes to see 'pace' even if you are treading water and I refuse to waste my time appearing responsive. I told him I understood what needed to be done and like everything else I've accomplished to date, eventually my efforts will yield results. He asked me what folks in Washington might think when looking at our metrics about individual officers and I told him folks in Washington don't have that kind of time and the volume of information coming across the desk on any given day doesn't lend itself to wondering what Ava is up to. What I wished I had mentioned was at the end of the day, no one cares about anything but results. They don't care if I went to 50 meetings or 5. I worked really hard at it so I do hope he read the 'kiss my ass' subtext loud and clear. I need more than anything for him to leave me the fuck alone. He had the gall to try to mooch credit for one of my projects. Something he hasn't done anything to support or guide. Some people...